Taking Another Shot
Once again, as I did last year, I have entered the Writer’s Digest short-short-story competition. I took a kernel of an idea I’d had for a novel aimed at young teens, wrote a drastically shortened draft of it, then ran several edit passes while trying to shoehorn it into the contest’s 1,500-word limit. Not easy, but worth the effort.
I am not holding my breath about prizes; just glad to have given my prose-producing and -polishing muscles a good workout.
Take a Course, or Just Write?
As a chess master, I sometimes give exhibitions at shopping malls, playing numerous passersby at once. One twentyish opponent at an upstate New York mall gave me a decent fight before succumbing, then asked if chessplayers could make decent money, because he knew he was good.
Poor deluded fellow – he thought he was ready to challenge all comers. He’d had no exposure to the world of organized chess, and he didn’t know that a huge body of knowledge about the game had been built up over centuries, published, and constantly refined. In serious competition against a typical tournament veteran, this guy’s chances would be zero.
Since I subscribe to Writer’s Digest (a fine magazine that I don’t read as closely as I ought), I often receive emailed ads for their writing courses. Part of me thinks, “I should take one of these courses, to get inspiration, feedback, a sense of community, and hard-won knowledge from genuine writing pros.” Another part responds, “You already know how to put words together; don’t spend hundreds of bucks on yet another delaying tactic!” (The remaining part of my brain is pondering the eternal question: “What shall I eat next?”)
Every time I’ve received those ads, I’ve opted to forego formal instruction. Yet I wonder: am I being as ignorant and bullheaded as the mall shopper who thought he knew enough to be a chess champion? Should I admit that I’m a novice at novel-writing and actually try to learn something?
Welcome to FirstNovel.com!
Yes, I’m working on my first novel. Two, actually. But I’m not sure whether I will finish both … and if so, which one will be done first. (Maybe it should be FirstNovels.com?!)
Anyway, I intend to share the experiences of working on my first novel[s]. All you other budding novelists: please join me for the ride!
P.S. This is extremely freaky. Just a few minutes after posting the FirstNovel.com site for the first time, I received an email from Writer’s Digest (to which I subscribe). Nothing too odd there, as they pitch products to me all the time … but in this case, they were offering a handful of books about writing novels. Included was one work entitled Your First Novel.
It’s almost as if they saw this site launched and tried to pounce on a marketing opportunity. I mean, OK, it’s just a coincidence (coinciding, as it were, with an early stage of National Novel Writing Month). Still, it made me wonder!